No to Age Banding

SUPPORTERS P-S

We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, booksellers, publishers, educationalists, psychologists, parents and grandparents. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.

But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.

We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.

The list of supporters has grown so much that we have split it into six. This page has people whose surnames begin with the letters P-S. Other pages have surnames A-C, D-G, H-L, M-O, T-Z and the latest additions to the list.

The list of supporters has grown so much that we have split it into six. This page has people whose surnames begin with the letters P-S. Other pages have surnames A-C, D-G, H-L, M-O, T-Z and the latest additions to the list.

NB Please bear with us if your name is not yet on this list. There is an inevitable delay between you sending your email and it being uploaded.

To sign up and show your support for this statement, send an email to
signup at notoagebanding dot org
. We will publish your name and any relevant description (eg author, librarian, bookseller) on this web site. We'll keep your email address confidential and won't pass it to anybody else, but we may write occasionally with relevant news.

We've had reports that the above link is garbled in some browsers. If that is the case, please accept our apologies: the link is coded to fool the spammers but it's obviously fooling some browsers too. If necessary type the email address signup at notoagebanding dot org into your email program.